Capítulo II: Monitoring heritage-buildings with open source hardware
3. Materials and Methods
astrologer, counsellor and mother. A Gemini, she will be speaking on this subject at the Astrological Association 1999 August Conference. To prove she in fact has a stellium of plan-ets in Gemini she will be simultaneously breastfeed-ing a new-born and escort-ing a toddler and husband.
1 Johnson, Robert A (1983) We Harper Row
2 Act of Union - 1 January 1801 0:00 GMT London 3 Belloc, H. (1961) Tristan and Iseult Unwin 4 Donne, J. (1981) Elegie III Change Selected Poems Penguin
Neptune and Pluto: Romance in the Underworld Sophia Young
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice epitomises the nature of romantic love as we understand
it today, says Sophia Young. Describing the ancient tradition of courtly love, Sophia tells
us a moving story of how one woman’s struggle towards self-esteem has been helped by a
love that is not so far removed from that of the troubadours of old.
lions and millions. That fear is kept away by look-ing upon all those about one who are bound to one as friends or family, but the dread neverthe-less is there and one hardly dares think of what would happen to one of us if all the rest were taken away.”
Kierkegaard 1936.
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omantic union with the Other can be a defence against existential aloneness.However, as with all defence systems, at some point they will be challenged. We cannot stay forever in the Neptunian twelfth, but must brave Pluto, in order to pass on over the Ascendant and be born. The combining forces of love, or Eros (Neptune), inevitably meet the destructive separating ones of death, or Thanatos (Pluto).
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he story of Orpheus and Eurydice can be read as a demonstration of what happens when the Other is not allowed to be experi-enced as separate; how Pluto and Neptune are romantically linked. This story may have its roots in the 579-575 BCE conjunction of Neptune and Pluto in Taurus, at the start of classical Greece, though such myths inevitably evolve through different incarnations and eras.However, the refusal to let go of the beloved ideal, and eventual dismemberment, echo the Taurus/Scorpio axis in a more graphic way than the stories from the Neptune/Pluto in Gemini/Sagittarius.
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rpheus is an archetypal Piscean. His mother is Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry. His father is Apollo, the Sun God.Orpheus himself is a great musician and a romantic. According to Shakespeare he had the power to make flowers open and wild beasts turn gentle with his harmonies. Orpheus yearns for the perfect woman, a muse with whom to fuse. This idealised relationship with the muse is often observed in poets, qv Dante and Beatrice, and Yeats and Maude Gonne.
The fantasy of perfection is retained, and fuels their poetic imagination.
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hen at last Orpheus meets his anima personified, the nymph Eurydice, he falls in love and they marry immediately. She can-not resist his spellbinding charm. However, in their courtship, all has been romance; there has been no time for each to discover the other,“warts & all”. The movement from this stage in relationship where the beloved is an arche-typal Other Half, Mr or Ms Right, a mirror of one’s soul, to one where the projec-tions and realities are sorted and sifted is a difficult one to weather in real life.
Infantile rage at the unbearable separate-ness of the other may resurface and shatter the relationship.
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ust as the alchemists first mixed their individ-ual elements, then separated them in search of the philosopher’s stone, so we too, on our individual journeys, are subject to a process of fusion followed by separation. Jung quoted a medieval alchemist: “only what is separated, may be properly joined.” There is a constant cycle of separation and attachment throughout life. First we are expelled from the womb; once out, we eventually discover mother is a sepa-rate entity. (I have an 18-month-old son who refuses to name me Mummy, although Daddy, the dog, aeroplanes, ladders, and flowers all have names. If he were to speak my name, he would be admitting that I am separate from him.)I
f we manage to weather these primary part-ings, there is then the journey to discover who we are as separate selves. Sometimes this can be done within relationship, sometimes her-metically alone. For self-discovery to be under-taken within a relationship, consciousness must be permitted entry, and ancient defences low-ered. In the alchemical process there is a stage of mixing elements represented by a naked King and Queen shaking left hands. The linked left hands show they are not conscious in their union. Likewise with Orpheus and Eurydice’s marriage. It is a state of solutio or dissolving.They are the same. The relationship has over-whelmed them.
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wo symbols of consciousness, fire and the snake, appear in the Orpheus myth.Fire: At the wedding feast there is an ill omen.
Hymen, the God of Marriage, lights his wedding torch, but smoke, not flames, issues forth. The flame is a representation of consciousness, the fire Prometheus stole from the Gods for knowl-edge. In this partnership, self-knowledge is yet to spark.
The serpent is the animal found on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Shortly after the wedding, Eurydice is chased by a shepherd and, as she flees from him, she is fatally bitten by a snake. That which we reject often comes back to bite us. The snake is Eurydice’s rejected Pluto embodied. It can be a symbol of life and fertility when erect, or death and evil when crawling.5
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t is Eve who is first drawn to consciousness by the serpent. The sin she incites, to eat from the tree of knowledge, is sometimes known as the felix culpa (fortunate guilt). If the apple had never been eaten, then mankind would have been stuck in the womb of Paradise forever.I
t is Eurydice who is the first to leave the romance, and descend to the underworld. In 5 Condren, M (1989)The Serpent and the Goddess Harper & Row
modern life it is often the female partner who is the first to feel the need to be separate, who drags the male off to Relate. Just as Adam and Eve are not permitted to remain in ignorant bliss, neither are Orpheus and Eurydice allowed to continue this sublime romance. Romantic love always ends. Orpheus is not prepared to see his love as an individual. Eurydice cannot form a union with someone who is unable to let her be herself. Her own Pluto cycle claims her in the form of a serpent.
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urydice descends to the underworld, and Orpheus wanders searching and longing for her. While Pluto works his transit on Eurydice, Orpheus has not changed his pattern, still long-ing for his romantic ideal. Heartbroken Orpheus implores Zeus to let him into the underworld and Zeus consents for him to seek his wife.Orpheus hastened to the entrance of Hades, and there saw the fierce three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the gate and would allow no living being to enter nor any spirit to pass out of Hades.
As soon as this monster saw Orpheus he began to growl and bark savagely; but Orpheus merely paused and began to play such an enchanting melody that Cerberus’ rage was appeased and he finally allowed him to pass.
The magic sounds penetrated even into the remote depths of Tartarus, where the condemned shades suspended their toil for a moment and hushed their sighs to listen. Even Tantalus paused in his eternal effort to quash the ever-receding stream, Sisyphus ceased to roll his heavy stone and Ixion’s wheel stayed for a moment in its ceaseless course.6
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rpheus then employs a reflective tech-nique, also seen in the Myth of Gilgamesh.When Inanna is impaled on a hook in the Underworld by an envious sister, Ereshkigal, her rescuers do not turn to Inanna directly. They address Ereshkigal’s grief at the death of her husband and birth pains, in order to release the jealously hooked Inanna. The Piscean Orpheus has a similar natural compassion. In Gluck’s Opera Orfeo ed Euridice, when he enters the underworld he sings, “Mille pene, ombre
Apollon Issue 2 April 1999 page 449 G. F. Watts
Orpheus and Eurydice Photo: Fred Hollyer
6 Geuber, H A (1938) The Myths of Greece & Rome Harrap & Co
moleste” - “A thousand pangs I too suffer, like you, o troubled shades; my hell lies within me, in the depths of my heart”. Orpheus notices the pain around him and does not directly demand his prize.7
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n “unknown feeling of pity sweetly comes to soften (their) implacable rage.” Pluto and his Queen Persephone are reduced to tears, and they consent to restore Eurydice to him. However, there is one condition; he must not look round to see his beloved’s face until he has left the underworld. This is a difficult situa-tion. If Orpheus doesn’t face Eurydice he will never truly relate to her and if he does it before he has completed his own underworld cycle, she will be separated from him.N
ow, Eurydice has undergone some changes in Pluto’s realm. Maidens taken into the underworld grow up. Eurydice has let herself go through the process of separating from Orpheus. She is no longer the archetypal blonde Virgoan maiden with plaits like harvest-ed sheaves.8 The cutting or covering of a girl’s hair in many cultures marks an important tran-sition towards womanhood.Never shall a young man Thrown into despair
By those great honey coloured Ramparts at your ear Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
W. B. Yeats For Anne Gregory9
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f we allow our Pluto transits to work, we are changed. Eurydice wants Orpheus to see her for who she is now, and not for the maiden she was; she berates him on the way back up. Their relationship cannot be complete unless he sees her, yet he has not completed his transition.He turns to look, prematurely, before he has completed his own voyage out of the under-world, and she descends once more. She has matured, and wants to be loved for herself alone, not as a Muse; he is unable to have a relationship with her until he has finished his heroic journey.
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rpheus wanders, heartbroken, once more.He follows his well-worn path, playing dirges and woeful songs. He refuses to play a different tune for the Titan women or the Furies. He will not change. They become enraged at his lack of response, and rip him to shreds. In another version, these women kill him because he worships Apollo his father, the Sun, instead of Dionysus, a Neptunian deity.
Both messy endings have a shared theme of Orpheus’ refusal to change, and accept different female desires.
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he Furies who tear him to pieces are, per-haps, representations of his own angry and rejected Feminine, unable to stand the process of separation. Part of Orpheus resists being born as an individual, and that is the part that splits off, and then furiously persecutes him.T
he furious shredding attack of that which has been projected out, appears in Kleinian psychology as a developmental stage.10A child has destructive feelings towards the mother who is not totally merged with it, who does not respond to every need immediately. These feel-ings cannot be born inside, so are projected out into the mother. Mother now possesses these destructive feelings. The child then fears a shat-tering and destructive attack from its own feel-ings, conveyed by the person into whom they are projected. This dynamic is both Neptunian and Plutonian, and is played out in the tic myths. It is also demonstrated by the roman-tic life of Natalie.Chart Example
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his is the chart of a woman who, through-out her life, has struggled hard with the urge to merge, and the urge to die. Natalie is a woman of great intelligence, sensitivity and integrity. She is also plagued by suicidal thoughts, an eating disorder, and self-loathing.She has great difficulty in forming intimate sex-ual relationship, which can be understood from an examination of her family history and her chart.
Mother
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atalie’s mother’s natal Sun is conjunct Natalie’s Saturn. Natalie’s mother is a woman with a traumatic sexual history and psy-chiatric disturbance. She victimised Natalie, mocking her sexual development, labelling any emotional demands Natalie made as being “dif-ficult”, and acting the part, not of the mother, but of the needy child. Natalie has a Sun-Moon-Neptune stellium in Scorpio, in the eleventh, and very little emotional distance from her mother, together with a great propen-sity for caretaking others. She has taken in whole her mother’s messages, about her needs being difficult, and her sexuality derisory.T
he anger at the treatment she received, and her mother’s lack of mothering, has been too enormous for her fragile ego to experience directly. Her unaspected Mercury in the tenth is not well placed to mediate her powerful feel-ing responses. Her rage is either projected in the form of a feared attack from outside, or experienced physically as pain. Fearing a Titan-like attack from these feelings, she shreds her-self first before they can get to her, cutting her breasts and vagina, mutilating her face. Rather than let someone else humiliate her, she humil-7 Howard P (1981)Cambridge Opera Handbook CUP
8 Warner, M (1994) From the Beast to the Blonde Chatto & Windus
9 Yeats, W B (1989) Yeats’ Poems
Macmillan, p360 10 Segal, H (1988) Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein Karnac
Apollon Issue 2 April 1999 page 551
“Natalie”
Birth Details withheld by request
11 Perry, G (1999)
“Pluto Pathology”
The Mountain Astrologer No. 83 iates herself, covering herself in her own
excre-ment; she feels she is shit. So high has her anx-iety been about what is out there, she has, for periods, been a recluse, unable to answer the doorbell, or travel outside.
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atalie’s behaviour has led her to follow in her mother’s footsteps, quite literally, to the same psychiatric hospital. At her Saturn return she took an overdose at a healer’s house and was admitted for treatment. Throughout her stay, she rejected the role of patient, deny-ing any difficulty and trydeny-ing to nurse other clients. Natalie’s Sun-Moon-Neptune stellium was being squared, by both the natal and tran-siting Saturn, at the time of the overdose. She clung rigidly to the role she knew, denying her own need for help, and surrounding herself with needy people who were ready to identify with the victim role.N
atalie has not only expressed her desire to die by such relatively gentle means. She is also a Scorpio, with Pluto approaching her Ascendant. As she becomes more aware of the buried rage within, she talks of wanting to die in a car crash, of bombs going off, of the vio-lence that is locked up inside.Father
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here are oral/sexual memories of her now-dead father. She has imagery of suffocating and choking on her father’s phallus, as a small girl. This consuming part of her is now “bad”;she struggles with food, and has a terror of vomiting up the terrible, forbidden things she has swallowed. Yet she has a huge thirst for her parents (Sun-Moon-Neptune conjunct) that was thwarted (apex second house Saturn, opposition Mars). This second house Saturn guards against the dangerous unmeetable need to be valued. Like Saturn, her needs have quite literally been swallowed.
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atalie will binge eat, shopping for food as if in a dream, and, blocking awareness of her actions, consume in huge amounts. After this second house intake, she will purge herself by overdosing on laxatives. The nourishment she desires, but cannot assimilate, explodes out as shit in Plutonian style.11 Natalie is obese.After her suicide attempt she melted her solid flesh, not into a dew, as Hamlet would have, but into a sea of fat. She has expressed the hope that her obesity will make her physically repulsive to others. The downside is that she feels her inner repugnance is on view for the world to see. The payoff is that, hypothetically, she does not have to deal with sexual relation-ships, as no-one will be attracted to her. The one lasting sexual relationship she did have was with a man who sometimes acted as if he despised her. She, in turn, would encourage him
t o d o things to her s e x u a l l y which she felt hurt and humiliat-ed by.
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atalie now feels it is safer for her to let in the little intimacy she can bear, through friendships. With her Sun-Moon-Neptune con-junction in the eleventh, she loses herself as she acts as a medium and a counsellor for her friends’ relationships. She feels that as she is so repugnant, the best she can do is to serve oth-ers, and she tries to suppress her own fifth house needs. Yet Natalie is by nature a pas-sionate woman. Her throat (Taurus ruled) is often tight from the effort of keeping these needs in. Saturn in the second holds on physi-cally here; whereas the opposition Mars in Leo in the eighth expels, with the violent contrac-tion of laxatives, unseen into the bowl, to be flushed away.H
er pattern of becoming deeply involved in the relationships of friends is reflected by Venus in the twelfth in Scorpio at the apex of a T-square. She prostrates herself to the eternal triangle. She becomes a “counsellor” figure as she did in the psychiatric hospital. Natalie is, perhaps, repeating an early childhood pattern of trying to mend her parents’ marriage, to make them well enough to finally take care of her.A
lthough Natalie desires better parenting, she also has the need to relive the Oedipal battle with her mother for her father, which she had the horrific expe-rience, in real life, of winning. Little girls going through the Oedipal stage, playing coquette to Daddy, are looking for their attractiveness to be seen and admired, for their emerging Venuses to be bolstered.Natalie’s victory resulted in rape, guilt and humiliation.
It is this Oedipal tragedy she both guards against repeating by being obese, and yet sets up to recur, again and again, by becoming involved in triangles.
Romance
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he is currently involved in a triangle with a gay man, Bob, and his lover, Hussein. Bob is Natalie’s very close friend and confidante. He is genuinely fond of her, and concerned about her. She loves Bob in a romantic way. He is her medieval knight in shining armour, clever, handsome and unobtainable.Her Neptunian side wishes only that he should be happy with Hussein, and she puts a lot of effort into
Her Neptunian side wishes only that he should be happy with Hussein, and she puts a lot of effort into